


Premature Ventricular Contractions

by asystole (alittlenutjob)



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlenutjob/pseuds/asystole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trouble with this new life after death situation, well, one of the troubles, is that I can't always separate which feelings are mine, and which are coming from my most recent meal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Premature Ventricular Contractions

_The trouble with this new life after death situation, well, one of the troubles, is that I can't always separate which feelings are mine, and which are coming from my most recent meal._

* * *

“Oh!”

Peyton moves faster than Ravi. Almost everything is still covered, but the ruffled state of Ravi's ordinarily perfect hair and the quick adjustment of a couple of strategically placed sofa cushions indicates that things were about to get Very Uncovered Indeed. “Sorry, Liv. I thought you were having dinner with your mom.”

There's a funny sucking feeling in her chest, and all Liv can think is that if her heart could still beat properly she's pretty sure would have just skipped a beat. “No problem, it's your home too. Why wouldn't you bring a date back?”

Ravi's eyes seem to be searching the ceiling for an escape hatch. For some reason Liv can't stop herself from trying to fill the awkward silence. “I should have texted before dropping in unexpectedly. I just wanted to change clothes before I went over there. Mom is a little less overbearing when I wear something bright. I'll be gone in 5.”

She makes a beeline for her bedroom and pulls the door closed behind her softly. Surely she should have expected to find them together at some point. Why is she standing here with her hands folded over her stomach when she should be finding something in the closet that screams “ _Hey Mom I'm doing great!”_ or at least “ _I haven't joined a cult_ ”? These family dinners are almost unbearable these days. Major had always been a buffer at these things, keeping her glass full and redirecting nosy questions. It didn't always work, but at least she had an ally at the table. Now she has nothing. Except the sinking sensation that she's lost something important and a far fetched hope that the wave of jealousy she's drowning in right now is down to something she ate.

This morning's meal had come courtesy of a traffic accident victim, a young woman who'd gambled with cycling in a rainy city and lost. The cause of death was internal bleeding, diagnosed too late because she'd walked away from the crash under the assumption that the bruising on her stomach would clear up in a week or so, then collapsed later at home, alone. The family had just been one brother with red-rimmed eyes and his rather lost looking girlfriend. _She was all I had_ , he'd whispered before he and his sad shadow left.

Liv runs her hands along the rack and prays the cyclist had been a lesbian, because the alternative implications were a little more than she could deal with right now. Being accidentally in love with Peyton for a week was something she could almost understand. They'd been thick as thieves since the night they'd both made a move for some stupid frat bro who'd realized two girls wanted his attention and stupidly tried to turn it to his own advantage. The threesome was a no go, and they'd dumped the guy and kept each other and never once looked back. Being in love with Ravi though... that would be complicated.

A strange impulse seizes her and she plucks from the closet the tightest dress she owns. It's shimmery blue-green with only one strap, and she'd been avoiding it for months now. It shows an expanse of thigh that was immodest in her previous life, but unthinkable now that she's more or less a shade that falls between polar bear and powdered sugar. This almost translucent skin makes her feel self conscious and she shows as little of it as possible, but tonight she feels like baring something.

She remembers as she slips it over her head that the fabric was a little itchy in her past life, but the feeling is negligible now and the way it clings makes her feel strangely powerful. Who she's trying to dominate is still a little fuzzy, but she fluffs her hair a little and adds a slash of bright red lipstick, which stands out like blood on snow.

Liv tries to move quickly and avert her eyes before she sees something that triggers another uncomfortable feeling, but Peyton and Ravi are just talking, wineglasses at hand and some inane reality TV show on in the background. _Maybe it wasn't meant to go that far_ , she thinks, and something a little like relief chases her as she bolts for the door. She catches Peyton's raised eyebrow as she shouts a quick goodbye, and Ravi's face is... something. Gobsmacked is the expression that comes to mind. Peyton looks curious, and Ravi looks gobsmacked. And Liv feels... _good_.

* * *

 

 

“Liv!”

Her mood is pretty decent and she's trying to maintain that feeling by sneaking in and running for her room, but Peyton's alone in the kitchen reading something on her iPad and her voice is light. It must have been a good night for her as well.

A buffer hadn't been necessary at dinner this time. Liv's mother had asked the standard questions, but whatever drove the Girl on the Bike was making Liv immune to the mothering onslaught. It was nice to be cared for actually. She'd been able to respond to questions with a little enthusiasm for once, and when asked if there was anyone special in her life these days she'd completely honestly blurted “Yes!” before her own brain caught up with her mouth. She'd practically skipped home.

“He's gone! Nothing to see,” Peyton says as she looks up.

“Oh,” Liv says for the second time that night. Disappointment is the overriding emotion here. _Shit._

“Thanks for pushing me to say yes to him, Liv. He's really something. I mean, I've dated hotter guys, and taller, and even more British, but there's something about him. He makes me laugh. I don't know.” Peyton's laughter sounds like crystal in the quiet room and it's obvious that she's still on that date high. Liv can't remember feeling like that, being the reason someone laughs, being drunk on someone. Not in a long time. Not even with Lowell.

“Yeah, he's pretty funny.” Liv hopes the sullen note in her voice doesn't catch Peyton's attention, but she should know better by now. Peyton is the whole package - gorgeous, driven and sharp as a scalpel. She catches everything.

“Hey, don't be jealous. You'll find someone soon. I know you're still adjusting to life after Lowell, but you're going to wake up one day and feel ready to try again. You're the whole package.”

Liv wonders first if they use the phrase "the whole package" too much or if it's just coincidence that she'd been thinking the same thing about Peyton. A second thought chases that one, and stays with her as she wipes away the remains of her lipstick and puts the dress away before crawling into bed to stare at the TV as she tries to fall asleep. _What if I already found someone?_

* * *

 

“Hi.”

Liv's head feels full of fog from half dreams and broken sleep, but Ravi's voice resonates like a bell somewhere in her body that might be her stomach and might be her heart. She almost drops her hoodie on the floor before hanging it and making her way down to his station at exam table 1.

_Maybe the girl on the bike had a thing for British guys? Please let that be it._

The one person on earth she'd be able to discuss this with is standing in front of her with his sleeves rolled up and his hands deep in the body cavity of a GSW to the chest. She can't really say, _I think something was up with that last brain, because I am having this sudden craving to lick your neck,_ to her boss. To her friend. Ravi is her friend. Peyton is her friend. Everyone is just so very _friendly._ No one gets hurt when two of your friends start to fall for each other, right? Normal people are happy for their friends, and that's what she is. Happy she means, not normal. Normal isn't really an option, but happy could be, if she can just shake this weird feeling that something has been stolen from under her nose.

“What's the COD?” she asks without looking too closely at him or the body.

“Well, as you can see, he was shot, but the bullet passed through. This didn't kill him.” Ravi grins and it's like warm sunshine on her face. “I'm just spitballing here, but I think our man actually may have died of a coincidence.”

“A coincidence?” _Don't look at him, don't look at him._ _His eyelashes are so long…_ She peers into the victim's body cavity to avoid further eye contact and derail that train of thought. She sees what Ravi means - just a through-and-through shot, no major arteries damaged, pericardium is intact.

“I think,” he says as he pulls his hands back out of the body, “that when we open up his head we're going to find an aneurysm. I think he'd have survived the gunshot wound but the shock of being shot blew something that had been lying in wait for him for a while. Imagine it, he'd been walking around with a ticking timebomb in his head for perhaps his whole life, and could have died a very old man with no symptoms of it at all, but one non-fatal gunshot and game over. The human body is a funny thing.”

“Yeah it is.” She's never noticed his cologne before, not even when he'd held on to her for god knew how long the night she'd finally said goodbye to Lowell. She doesn't even like it, she thinks, but that might be the brain talking. Or maybe Liv doesn't like it and the brain is the one telling her that her sheets could smell like that every morning and she'd die a happy zombie, figuratively speaking. “So, you ready to open his head?”

“Do you need to eat? You just ate yesterday, you're usually okay for a couple of days on one.”

“Yesterday's brain was... lonely.” It's not until she says it that she knows for sure that it's true. Maybe a lifetime of loneliness drove this girl. Maybe the brother who'd looked like his whole world collapsing was her whole world as well. Maybe she'd looked at the world and seen no place to fit into it, not really, not like before Lake Washington.

_Whoa, where'd that come from?_

“Are you okay? Are you absolutely positive that the possibility of reliving this guy's life that apparently featured random _shootouts_ is better than being lonely for a little while?” He looks concerned and she wants nothing so much as to lay her hand along his face and run her thumb along his cheekbone.

 _What if it's not just a little while?_ she wants to ask him. _What if this is just who I am and what I am forever? A lonely person._ Instead she looks him directly in the eyes again. “Yes. I'm sure. And I'll be okay.”

He keeps looking at her like he wants to question her decision, but to his credit he keeps his mouth shut and lets her get on with the grim business of preparing a meal fit for a zombie. Nothing stirs up that loneliness like staring into a bowl of noodles and human brains and knowing how few people could imagine eating such a thing, much less craving it like a hit. And knowing that the only thing between you and turning into a slavering monster without a hope of salvation is this. Lonely doesn't cover what this feels like. Hopeless might be closer to the truth.

A few bites later though, and the feeling is starting to fade. Okay, maybe not _fade_ fade, but it joins the background noise that most people feel over the course of the day. She feels better. She feels... smarter. No, that's not right, she's not smarter, she's just thinking faster. The guy she's just eaten must have had to hustle hard his whole life, because everything in the room has a price tag on it, and she's already eyeing up Ravi for any signs of weakness, something she can exploit.

“All better?” Ravi asks, sitting across from her without the slightest hint of trepidation about either the origin or the implications of her lunch.

 _That's why we're friends,_ she thinks. He'd watched her pour hot sauce all over a brain and shovel it into her mouth and he'd just _accepted_ her, no questions asked. Well, lots of questions asked, but nothing that forced her to qualify her own weird existence. Good thing that Lonely Girl's brain was wearing off, because the thought of losing his friendship because her heart raced a little once when he smiled was absolutely unthinkable. Romance is messy, makes you less sharp, easier to trick.

“I'm not sure I'd put it that way,” she replies, eyebrow arched. “But I think I'll be better soon. This guy was a hustler. I keep trying to decide if it would be easier to con you by playing on sympathy or straight up seduce you.”

_Whoops. Didn't mean to let that slip out._

He clearly doesn't find either prospect too daunting because he laughs, his smile wide and warm. _Back down, Lonely Girl. Let the Hustler take over before I try to kiss my only real friend._

“Well, I'm down to a stack of paperwork for the day. Why don't you get out of here, enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Maybe put on that dress you wore last night, go hop on some sort of casino cruise and grift someone who doesn't have to prep for court tomorrow?”

It's so hard to tell with the light down here, but she'd absolutely swear he's blushing. Just a little.

“Ah, the dress. That was, I mean, I don't usually...” If she could still blush too she'd be in trouble.

He hold his hands up. “You don't have to explain anything to me. It was just a bit of a shock. The Liv I know never really dresses provocatively. You looked like you were going out to lure sailors to their death.”

“Sorry if that was weird. I don't usually go full siren, just felt like being... noticeable. Must have been something I ate.”

“Sure. Well, if it make any difference you don't need the dress to get noticed.”

“On account of the fact that I look like the White Witch of Narnia?”

“Not at all.” Before he turns away and slips into his office she catches the smile again. “I'd have noticed you anywhere, long before the zombie thing. Promise.”

Liv ducks her own head and grabs her hoodie off the coat rack, pulling it on as she bolts up the stairs and out into the rain. Her chest doesn't feel empty this time, in fact it feels so full she's pretty sure her heart would be racing if that were still an option.

 _A human-zombie love story turning out as something other than a tragedy doesn't have great odds,_ she thinks as she turns around and walks right back in, past the exam tables and straight through to the office where Ravi is absentmindedly swirling a spoon in his CDC mug. He gives her a confused smile as she shuts the office door behind her.

_Good thing I just ate a gambler._

**Author's Note:**

> I don't usually write for other fandoms, but it was too tempting.


End file.
